Transcript Guns, Germs and Steel

Human Ecology and Economics
• Domestication and Human Evolution
Today
• Demographics and Population Growth
• What most affects life fulfillment—
population growth or resource use
• Ecological Economics
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
From Guns, Germs and
Steel, by Jared Diamond
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
Humans today
• Dominate planet
• Ecologists have often focused on “wild”
ecosystems
• But most landscapes now have some
human elements, usually very strong
effects
• Is this good or bad? And for whom?
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
Ecology is common sense
• Species live in
communities, or
considering the
larger
landscape,
“ecosystems”
• This is also true
for humans
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
Relationships among species
• In a community, relationships among species can be
beneficial, damaging or neutral:
– Symbiotic: mutually beneficial, both species benefit
– Parasitic: one species benefits (“parasite”) and the other is harmed
(“host”)
– Commensal: One species benefits, the other is unharmed
– Mutualism: both species benefit, like symbiosis, but it may appear one
species has the advantage, but evolutionarily, over the long-term, both
benefit
– Predation: Usually considered parasitic, where the predator is the
parasite, but can also be seen as mutualistic
• We think of species in a community as “co-evolving” to
establish these types of relationships
• For some reason, we don’t tend to analyze human
relationships with other species this way. But domestication
of other species, originally for agriculture, is most often
mutualistic.
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
Development of agricultural
systems were evolutionary events
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
What is domestication? What is
food? How did it all come about?
• We tend to assume that we are “consuming” resources—
physical or biotic. This is the view most texts provide
• But another way of thinking is that those species who coevolved with us into domestication have also been “winning”
the evolutionary game, or multiplying their numbers with us
(more dogs or wolves?; more horses or zebras?; more corn
or teosinthe?). Who “domesticates” whom? Who started
the relationship? Was it the plant who made its seed
obvious and easy to cultivate, or the humans who
“discovered” that seed? Was it the animal breed that was
naturally social and docile, or the humans who tamed the
animal?
• We can even understand laboratory domestications
(salamanders for developmental studies; E. coli for
recombinant DNA studies and production; white mice as
human analogs) as the most recent way in which other
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
species have convinced us to take care of them.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
Our relationship with domesticated species
• We do still have ecological relationships with “wild” species.
Examples:
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–
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Hunt mushrooms
Create game reserves
Create national parks
household and urban/rural “pests” (e.g. molds, sewer rats)
Symbiotic micro-organisms (skin and mouth bacteria)
Disease-causing micro-organisms
• But mostly we have tight relationships with domesticated
species. Basis for ecological relationship:
–
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–
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Food and agriculture (by far most common—food crops and animals)
Transportation (“beasts of burden”)
Care and protection (pets)
"It makes just as much sense to think
Laboratory study and production
of agriculture as something the grasses
Other?
did to people as a way to conquer the
trees."
--Michael Pollan, 2001, The Botany of
Desire
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
Resource use, or evolution of the
domesticate relationship?
• Our quality of life depends on how these
domesticate relationships continue to evolve.
• For the Earth, or the eco-systems, this evolution
will just be something “natural.”
• For us, it will determine how much suffering
versus how much plenitude people will
experience
• Over deep time history, large animals, and
especially large mammals like ourselves, have
been prone to rapid extinction
• Will our sentient nature overcome this trend?
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
Domestication
(or Human co-Evolution) Today
• Early agricultural domestication was with
species that
– Behave well with humans
– Make their reproductive processes obvious to
humans
• But what are domestications of last 100 years
– Laboratory domestications
– Species that can survive indoors
– Species that make some aspect of their biology—
usually at cellular/developmental/molecular level—
easily accessible to humans
FLT
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
Example 1: E. coli
WHY HUMANS “LIKE” E. coli
• Adaptable and reproduces
under wide variety of lab
conditions
• Easy visualization
• Genes and proteins easily
WHY E. coli “LIKES” HUMANS
accessible
• Provide new and safe
• Endonucleases and other
environments for reproduction
DNA manipulation
• Make new genetic material
genes/proteins known and
accessible
isolated
“Unintended” consequence •of Virulent strains with easy human
access
E. coli domestication—virulent,
anti-biotic resistant strains
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
Example 2: Guinea Pig—a triple domestication
Livestock
Lab animal
Pet
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
Human Ecosystem
• Biologically, the
human
ecosystem has
the same
components
(“biophysical
resources)
• But it gets
complicated
considerably by
cultural, social
and political
elements
• Maybe this is
why ecologists
love “wild”
ecosystems
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
A slightly simpler view
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
Population Growth
• Must be one of the principal
determinants of human ecology
and relation with environment
• With industrialization and
urbanization, population growth
escalates in extreme fashion or
exponentially
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
• In 1968, Paul Ehrlich, in The
Population Bomb, predicted
world population would explode
and that we need mass control
• Many projects to reduce “3rd
world” population increase
• Education of women, along with
increased wealth, only way to
get results
• Is it just biology? And what
determines fertility rate and
population increase?
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
Will the population bomb every explode?
• Or is it exploding now?
• What determines the limits to
growth?
• Is it population or resource use?
• Is it right to blame people having
children with the problem of
declining quality of life?
• Are high-fertility, “3rd world,”
regions the problem?
• Or is this a convenient way out
for high-consumption, “1st world”
peoples who don’t want to look in
the mirror?
• Because, look at energy use…
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
Which James Brown?
Godfather
of Soul,
Dancer
University of
New Mexico,
Macarthur Fellow
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
James
Brown, the
Godfather of
Soul, tells us
that as our
(extrametabolic)
energy use
goes up, our
life fulfillment
may go
down.
James Brown, the MacArthur
Fellow, tells us that fertility in
humans is directly correlated
with energy use, just like any
other species of mammal
Increased
metabolic
energy use
(remember
the dancing)
might be the
solution.
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
How traditional economists
see the world
But..
what..
about..
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
• In traditional
economics, growth
can go on forever.
New ideas and
technologies will
always allow the
economy to grow.
• An ecological
economics model
accepts a limit to
growth, not
necessarily population
growth, but growth in
use of resources or
energy, or both
• Which view do you
accept?
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
Where do we find fulfillment?
• If we accept that growth has limits
• And if we accept that increased consumption that
accompanies our “modern” life-style may be pushing us
towards that limit
• Should we ask other peoples to limit their fertility?...
• Or should we limit our consumption?
• Will people limit their consumption for the societal
good?...maybe
• But what about the tradeoff with spiritual energy and where
we derive our fulfillment
• Maybe the great 21st century transition will be away from
looking to “material goods” for fulfillment and towards (re)
recognizing the value of spiritual goods—family, children,
fresh food—a home as opposed to a house.
• Will we also (re) recognize the value of our relationships—
with each other, with our co-evolved species?
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College
Man alone ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and thereby began to acquire and
transmit learning, or “culture.” With each new skill he found in his surroundings more
opportunity or “resources” to fashion products of use to himself, to improve his well-being, and
to increase his numbers. An environment can only be described in terms of the knowledge
and preferences of the occupying persons: “natural resources” are in fact cultural
appraisals. Occasionally, a new idea arose in some group and became a skill and institution.
Such innovation might bring out new possibilities of the homeland: it might also give
competitive advantage over neighboring folk, and set in motion pressures eased by migration…
There is no general law of progress that all mankind follows: there are no general
successions of learning, no states of culture, through which all people tend to pass. There have
been progressive cultures and others that show almost no signs of change. The latter are to be
found in areas of high isolation: the former have been favored by the nature and location of heir
homelands. The parallel to biologic evolution is significant. Invention begins by small
increments of insight, variant ideas that gain acceptance under a favorable cultural climate.
Variation follows on variation and may build up into a significantly new way and view of
life. Now and then, in a few and, I may repeat, physically favored areas some such center
has burst forth into a great period of significant invention, from which ideas spread, and in
part changed as they spread afield. These centers of major and sustained innovation were
always few. In the history of man, unless I misread it greatly, diffusion of ideas from a few
hearths has been the rule: independent and parallel invention the exception.
-Carl Sauer, 1952, Seeds, Spades, Hearths and Herds, pp. 2-3
Larry M. Frolich, Ph.D.
Biology Department, Yavapai College